He wasn’t supposed to be there. All bets were on Emanuel brushing aside his four much lesser-known challengers in one fell swoop during the Feb. 24 general election.

Why wouldn’t he?

Emanuel had promise that turned into a portfolio. He was the finance director for mayoral candidate Richard M. Daley in 1989 and presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992. He became a multimillionaire Wall Street investment banker before returning to Chicago to win Rod Blagojevich’s U.S. House seat. In 2009 he resigned his congressional post to become President Barack Obama’s first chief of staff.

Five days before last month’s general election, Obama returned the favor by cutting a radio ad endorsing Emanuel and flying into Chicago to stump for his former badass buffer while designating the city’s Pullman Historic District a national monument. Mayoral candidate Emanuel also had a campaign war chest that was in the double-digit millions.

None of that was quite enough. Emanuel was too much the unlikable mayor, so the city’s voters didn’t like him back. He fell 4.4 points short of the 50 percent-plus-one votes needed to avoid a runoff.

So there Emanuel sat at Thursday night’s debate, side by side with challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, taking incoming flak from the man he’d bested in the first match 10 days earlier. There he sat, in this second debate, watching Garcia make a comeback by interrupting him, deriding his first four years as the city’s chief executive and even laughing at his carefully crafted mayoral message.

Garcia’s credentials were not nearly as impressive as Emanuel’s. Garcia was not even a millionaire and had no prospect of becoming one. He was a mere Cook County commissioner, a former Illinois state senator and city alderman. He was basically a community organizer daring to challenge the up-and-comer who had definitely become ... da mayor.

In the run up to last month’s general election, the Emanuel campaign spent nearly $7 million on 4,600 TV attack ads defining Garcia as the not-ready-for-the-big-time candidate. The heavy barrage has continued with TV spots attacking Garcia’s nonspecific solutions to Chicago’s $20 billion in unfunded pension debt. The mayor’s positive TV ads presented Emanuel all dressed down, wearing a Mr. Rogers sweater while admitting that sometimes he’s been a jerk but that he’s been a jerk for the good of Chicago.

The TV ads were worth every million. Polls indicate that Emanuel has shifted from a too-close-to-call status to a double-digit lead.

And yet the mayor still had to debate this interloper. Garcia, who comes off like the guy you give a big hug to right before he asks you to all hold hands and sway as you sing “Kumbaya,” was being annoyingly on the offense. The commissioner stuck with his populist rallying points, insisting that he would be a mayor who listened to the people, while Emanuel hadn’t a clue what the voters wanted or needed. Garcia charged that Emanuel wasn’t nearly as good a financial manager as his campaign claimed: If so, why was Chicago’s bond rating downgraded last month to two notches above junk status?

Emanuel still possesses all the no-nonsense, show-me-the-money charm of the Wall Street banker he once was; therefore, he is nothing if not disciplined. So he sat there, attentively listening as Garcia charged that his allowing movie mogul George Lucas to build an interactive museum on 17 valuable acres of free lakefront land was a “monument to Darth Vader.”

It had to bug Emanuel, framing a smile and acting civil throughout much of the debate, that like Garcia, the progressives in his political party were characterizing him as a mayor who could not care less for the little people, simply because he quid-pro-quoed his corporate contributors big privatization contracts. Too many in Chicago were beginning to refer to him as Mayor 1%, just like the book with the same title.

Rahm sat during the hour long debate, methodically sticking to his script. Sure, he closed 50 schools in poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods, but “our kids have a full school day of kindergarten,” he said. Sure, he closed half the city’s mental clinics, but “we added more spaces through federally qualified entities.”

Between the school and health-clinic closings, Chicago’s black voters aren’t as crazy about Emanuel as they were four years ago. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and many of the city’s other black leaders are going with Garcia. Fortunately, Emanuel invested wisely in some key black ministers, politicians and businessmen. They may well balance out the decisive black vote that will determine the winner.

When the debate ended, it was two down and one to go. The last one is tomorrow. The election is April 7. After that, the mayor can wave goodbye and become himself again.

Cybercolumnist Monroe Anderson is a veteran Chicago journalist who has written signed op-ed-page columns for both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times and executive-produced and hosted his own local CBS TV show. He was also the editor of Savoy Magazine. Follow him on Twitter.

May 01, 2010

Shortly after I bought my first PC, I started my novel about the first wave of African American journalists to go into mainstream media in Chicago in the early 1970s. That was back in late 1985. I finished my novel six years ago, then spent a good year trying to find an agent to represent it and me.

It was the most belittling and discouraging professional exercise I've ever experienced. I systematically sent letters out to dozens of literary agents. Frequently form letters were what I got in return, perfunctorily encouraging me--after they expressed no interest.

In a dozen instances or so I got letters asking to see the first three chapters. All but three of those interested agents sent personalized letters gently rejecting my labor of love. The rejection letters from the other three came after I'd sent the complete novel.

In every case, those who read it told me that the novel was well-written and that the characters were well-developed and interesting. Then came the but... One was bothered because the novel has a number of flashbacks. Another liked it but basically said it was too long. The third didn't really say why not.

I thought I understood their hesitations back then. I think I understand them even more today.

My novel, originally entitled The Corliss Column or A Generic Suicide Note, is 119,000 words or about 500 pages long. Too much book for a first novel. It is also not a commercial effort. It's not a mystery novel or a how-to book. No mainstream celebrity, I've not been trashed in the pages of the National Enquirer nor has my private life been teased in a promotion for Access Hollywood. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck haven't the foggiest idea who I am. Neither does Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews.

There are a couple of other reasons why an agent might not find me and my novel a top prospect. I'm no thirty-something so they are unlikely to get three or four decades of steady income off my production. After many false starts, I didn't really get serious about completing my first work of fiction until I had turned 50 and came to the realization that if I didn't do something soon I could end up on my deathbed speaking in short breaths about the novel I was going to write.

When I finished the novel five years after a concerted, disciplined effort, what I had in hand was a story about my protagonist, Pierce Trotter, and other black journalists' efforts to overcome hidebound, institutional racism in the news media--a pre-existing condition that is the book publishing industry suffers from as well.

Today, of course, it's a new game; sort of. While the law of last-hired, first-fired is still in effect, resulting in an disproportionate number of minorities losing jobs in the cut-backs, both the mainstream media and the book publishing industries are on life-support: Therefore the embedded racism rampant through both industries will go with them.

And while my novel, newly-named Sweetspeare's Sirens, a Tell-All Memoir by Pierce Trotter, is historical faction, I choose to look forward not back. I've decided to use the new media to publish my novel about the old media.

Beginning tomorrow, I'm going publish my book 140 characters at a time on Twitter. My tweets will show up on my other social media outlet, Facebook. Once 500-900 words have passed through Twitter and Facebook, they'll appear on MonroeAnderson3.0, a contemporary expression of the name on my birth certificate Monroe Anderson III, the new blog I've created exclusively for Sweetspeare's Sirens. Nearly finally, the novel post will appear in longer-form on my Facebook page until somewhere, someday it materializes as a hardcopy book.

Meanwhile, I'll be cutting the length of the novel by 40,000 words or so as I shoot it out into cyberspace.

A warning: Since Sweetspeare's Sirens is set in the '70s and '80s, there's lots of sex, drugs and Rhythm & Blues. There is also some raw language.

My latest venture into social media may also morph into performance art. We'll see as my experiment evolves.

I hope you'll follow me on this electronic journey. It should be some trip.

February 24, 2010

I heard about Malcolm X's assassination while listening to the radio in my father's car. For the life of me, I can't remember much else. I can't remember whether I was driving or a passenger. I can't remember where I was going. What I do remember is the news report that he had been fatally shot by gunmen while giving a speech in Harlem.

At the time, I knew little about Malcolm. I'd watched him on late-night talk shows that were forerunners to Common Ground, the one I'd find myself hosting three decades later.

Before the year of his assassination had ended, I'd come to know much more. By Fall, I was a freshman at Indiana University. Jazz musician Charles Ellison, who was one of three black students on my dorm floor back then and to this day remains one of my closest friends, dropped by my room with a big book in hand.

It was. The book stirred my soul and fired up my political consciousness unlike anything the fading Civil Rights Movement had ever managed to do. By the time I'd finished reading Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King's nonviolence approach to combating racial discrimination seemed about as relevant as a "We like Ike" campaign button. A little more than a year after Malcolm's death, when Stokely Carmichael shouted "Black Power," I took to quoting the Black Muslim leader and embracing Black Nationalism.

Today, of course, 45 years after Malcolm's death, blacks have power in America. We have black mayors in the nation's largest cities, black heads of Fortune 500 corporations, black governors and senators and Barack Obama.

That's not to say we still don't have a long way to go--just look at the unemployment and incarceration rates. There's still much work to do. But there are no longer any major obstacles that we can't overcome.

February 01, 2010

Besides holding down her job as my wife and mother of my two sons, Scott and Kyle, Joyce Owens is an artist and a professor and curator at Chicago State University. When she's not eyeballs deep in one of those five jobs, she takes time out to curate an exhibition for Sapphire & Crystals, a collective of African American women artists here in Chicago.

Without fail, this is the time of the year when the S & C's can bank on an exhibition somewhere. Black History Month really is predictable. And without fail, this is the time of the year when I was a captive sounding board, forced to hear Joyce complain about how this was the only time of the year that it occurred to white galleries, universities and community centers that showing art by black women is a good thing to do.

I understand all too well.

Although I'm available year round, my best speaking engagement in 2009 was a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr./President Barack Obama Celebration for the City of Chicago Height, Illinois. Of course, Obama's Inauguration was a true historical moment. The King Holiday and Black History Month, on the other hand, have become as regular as a Gregorian Calendar. The two African American observation's have sort of blended into Black History Season, which begins the day after Christmas for Kwanza and rolls on through the end of February. As for the rest of the year--forget about us.

I was reminded of this peculiarity when I read the latest post of my friend Jack White, Buckwheat's Black History Month Tour, on the Washington Post's black website, The Root. This visit to "the Home of Retired Racial Stereotypes" is a funny as Jack's drop in last April. Check it out and then tell me--if you can--why Black History Month shouldn't be integrated into American history, 24/7/52?

Here's Jack's post:

Buckwheat’s Black History Month Tour

By: Jack White

Posted: February 1, 2010 at 6:38 AM

Forget all the black public intellectuals. The Our Gang character has a few things to get off his chest.I came
across Buckwheat packing a Kente cloth suitcase in his suite at the
Home for Retired Racial Stereotypes. He was softly humming, “On the
Road Again.”

“My annual Black His’try Month speakin’ tour!”
said my diminutive friend in a high-pitched voice as he carefully
folded a colorful dashiki and placed it in the valise.

“This the month when black public
in-tee-leck-shals like me rakes in ‘nuf speakin’ fees to pay the bills
the rest of the year when nobody wants to hear nothin’ we got to say,”
said Buckwheat. “It’s kinda like bears eatin’ ‘nuf salmon durin’ the
spawnin’ run to get them through the winter.”

“I never thought of it like that,” I observed.

“Where will you be chowing down … I meant, speaking?”“Oh, I’m booked solid,” said Buckwheat proudly.
“I’m as pop’lar as Henry Louis Gates, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson,
Melissa Harris-Lacewell and Clarence Page put together. I got a Black
His’try road show with a bus and everythin’! ”

“But how could you possibly compete with such a gallery of brilliant minds?” I asked, skeptically.

“All of them just talks ‘bout black his’try,” he ranted, his voice rising into higher and higher registers.

“I lives it. I don’t just talk about racial
stereotypes—I IS one! Nobody can say ‘Here I is’ or ‘Otay’ like me!
Those are MY trademarks!!! I is an icon!! I is an original!!! WHEN YOU
SAY BUCKWHEAT, YOU SAY BLACK HIS’TRY!!!!!”

His tiny fists were pumping in the air, and he was
shrieking at such a high pitch it fractured the crystal glasses in the
dining room.

“Is that so,” I remarked.

“Yeah, and I got a book comin’ out to prove it. It’s called The Negro Squeaks of Rivers,” Buckwheat boasted. “PBS is plannin’ a 19-part series based on it. They think it could be bigger than Roots.”

Just then, I heard the growl of an engine and an
enormous red, black and green touring bus pulled up at the door. It
looked like the Kingfish was at the wheel.

May 26, 2009

Twenty five years ago today, I discovered that Leanita McClain, my friend and colleague, was dead. It was a suicide that came as no surprise to me. For more hours than I care to remember, I sat in her office at the Chicago Tribune joking, cajoling and questioning her repeated proclamation that she was going to kill herself.

During these discussions, I'd asked why. "There are black women who'd give their right arm to be where you are," I'd argue.

"But, I'm not happy," she'd counter.

Although a young 32, Leanita was the first black and second woman on the editorial board at the Trib. She had her own signed op-ed page Perspective column and a loyal following of readers. She'd written a My Turn piece for Newsweek magazine, about the complications of being a middle class black, that launched her star as a journalist. Her 1983 freelance commentary for the Washington Post, "How Chicago Taught Me to Hate Whites," about the racially polarized mayor's race in Chicago, is a classic. Professionally, she was on top of the world. In the year of her death, she'd been named by Glamour, magazine as one of America's Top 10 career women.

None of that seemed to matter. Personally, she was in a lot of pain. She suffered from clinical depression. And, sometime during the Memorial Day weekend, it got the best of her.

I'd hoped it wouldn't have come to such a tragic end. I'd convinced her to get professional help and nearly convinced myself that the psychiatrist was making a difference.

But on that fateful Memorial Day weekend, I knew something was wrong. I hadn't heard from Lea at all over the holiday weekend. This was out of character. For more than a year leading up to her suicide, we talked every day. I'd occasionally get a 3 o'clock in the morning call when she was stressed out.

That weekend, I didn't hear from her and when I called her home, she didn't answer. The Tuesday after Memorial Day, I dropped by her office only to see it empty, with lights out and newspaper stacked in front of the doors.

I called Clarence Page, her ex-husband, to see if he'd heard from her. He hadn't. Then I called one of our colleagues who lived in Hyde Park not far from her. Within a couple of hours, he called me with the bad news. She was gone. An overdose of pills.

Our editor, Jack Fuller, asked me to write my next Perspective column eulogizing her. It was the most difficult piece I've ever written on deadline. At the time, I thought it was far too inadequate. After it ran, many of my readers called or wrote to tell me how much it had moved them.

This is the first time I've read it in nearly 25 years. It's not as bad as I thought, although it could have been better. I'd like to share my bittersweet Memorial Day memory with you. Here's the column I wrote which ran on Friday, June 1, 1984.

A life cut short, a loss deeply felt

Whenever I had trouble saying what I wanted in a column, Leanita McClain came to my rescue.

In short order, with a slight change of a sentence here and a quick word of encouragement there, she'd help me breathe verve into what had been a still life.

I wish she were here to help me with this one. I don't know what I want to say or how I should say whatever I should be saying. I'm not even sure of how I feel except for one thing: a deep loss.

On the day after Memorial Day was observed, the day Leanita, 32, was found in her Hyde Park home, an apparent suicide, I lost a friend, a colleague and a confidante. In addition to being a personal loss for me, Leanita's death was an irreplaceable loss for the profession of journalism and a tragic loss for the voice of reason in Chicago.

Over the last 11 years, both our social and professional lives repeatedly crossed paths as we went through one change after another. Although I first met Leanita at a meeting for black journalists held in the South Side apartment where I lived at the time, our friendship got its start when I left Ebony magazine to come to The Tribune in 1974.

Leanita and my first wife were close friends. Looking back, those days seem so carefree. She and her husband and my wife and I went to restaurants, discos, movies together. We even took a dream vacation to Acapulco together.

As fate would have it, though, it took the deaths of our marriages to change my friendship with Leanita into what if was to become. Leanita, who had been like a sister to my estranged wife, began acting like a mother hen to me.

"Are you eating properly?" she'd ask, by way of looking after my welfare. And that question was just one manifestation of her gentle concern for how I was coping.

Leanita's caring and giving, of course, extended far beyond me. She became involved in such charitable pursuits as tutoring children from the Cabrini-Green public housing project. She helped friends through this or that personal crisis.

At all times, she was concerned about the plight of black journalists in general and those at The Tribune in particular. She'd complain, in her own quiet way, about how few blacks there were in the business, and virtually none in management.

"Are things ever going to really change?" she'd ask during discussions about the lack of black editors at one newspaper, or the problems of a black reporter at another.

Finally, things did change for her. Leanita had worked as a reporter, a copy editor, a picture editor and Perspective editor before going on to become the first black and second woman appointed to The Tribune's editorial board.

As editor of Perspective, a section of opinion and analysis, one of her first acts was to recruit black writers to integrate thought. Her dream, like Dr. Martin Luther King's, was to see the Perspective section, the newsroom, the corporate offices, the city, the state, the nation all integrated. Ironically, many of her critics in recent months unwittingly attacked her as a racist, based on her Washington Post article about white resistance to Harold Washington's election as mayor.

Her writing, whether in the "My Turn" column she did for Newsweek magazine on "The Middle-Class Black's Burden," or her columns in The Tribune, consistently addressed the problems of race relations in this nation with fairness and compassion, offering an idealistic vision of how they might be worked out.

Whenever she came to me with a problem column of her own that she needed my advice on, I'd tell her, "Lea, you're equivocating too much on this one. Choose one side or the other."

Most of the time, though, she'd stick with both views, suggesting a moderating, mediating approach even though neither side seemed to listen.

Ending this was as hard as it was starting it or getting through the middle. If Leanita were around, we might be smoothing out some of the rough edges.

April 09, 2009

I've been getting this viral email from white friends, black friends, even one of my Indian friends. It's one of these truths that's been hiding in plain site: Black is In!

I'm old enough to remember the '60s when we were last in. It turned out to be short and sweet. By the 1970s, there was talk of our being treated with benign neglect. In the 1980s, under the Reagan regime, it was no longer benign. And then it got worse.

But I digress. Reportedly, we're the new "it" ethnic group. To make it more palatable to the ignorance-is-bliss crowd, the truth is often packaged as a joke. The fact that black people are now the new black is no exception. Check it out.

"Black is in!"

The most powerful politician in the world is Black.

The head of the Republican National Committee is Black.

The best known media mogul on earth is Black.

The greatest golfer in the world is Black.

The top female tennis players in the world are Black.

The highest grossing actor worldwide is Black.

The fastest racing driver in the world is Black.

The brightest Astrophysicist under the sun is Black.

The Superbowl-winning Head Coach is Black.

The most successful brain surgeon in the world is Black.

The fastest human on the planet is Black.
...

Michael Jackson must be kicking himself.

Seriously, folks. We've got a Dickensonian development--best of times, worst of times--in black America that has created a false reality. Because there is an Obama, Oprah and Tiger, white Americans believe that the playing field is level and that all's fair and square.

It is not.

These monumental achievements by individuals--who happen to be black--aside, depressing disparities between blacks and whites persist.

Consider:

*For the last 25 years, murder has been the leading cause of death among African-American men between the ages of 15 and 34.

*In Chicago, President Barack Obama's hometown, only six out of 100 of the students in Chicago Public Schools, will graduate from college.

*For every dollar of wealth held by a white household, the typical black household has 10 cents.

*While the national unemployment rate was 8.1%, for blacks that figure was 13.4% … and for black males, 16.3%.

*Black males are incarcerated at a per capita rate six times that of white males. Nearly 11 percent of all black men ages 30 to 34 were behind bars as of June 30, 2007.

I could go on and on with the alarming stats but I won't. Reading them makes it easy to understand why Michael Jackson has paid big money to turn himself into something he's not and why the individual accomplishments of the Williams sisters, Steelers' coach Mike Tomlin, Neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and Astrophysicist Neil Tyson are so impressive.

March 03, 2009

When
I was in junior high, my speech teacher cited an article in one of the popular
periodicals of the time--Look or Life magazine, if memory serves me right--reporting that the Negro was the most motivated American in the nation.

You
can tell how long ago that was by the Negro reference. It was in the early '60s
when the Civil Rights movement was producing palatable progress. Dr. Martin Luther King was a
force to be reckoned with. Malcolm had not yet been murdered. And many a young
Negro who was planning of making something of himself wore his hair closely
cropped in what was called a "collegiate."

In
case you're wondering, the collegiate was identical to the hairstyle President
Barack Obama sports now.

On
June 16, 1966, both the hairstyle and the sense that the whole nation was
our oyster went out of vogue--as did Dr. King and his nonviolence movement.
That was the day Stokely Carmichael, the 25-year-old fiery orator who had
replaced John Lewis as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, defined a new social movement in America. In a stirring speech
in Greenwood, Mississippi before 3,000 civil rights volunteers who were
gathered to protest the shooting of activist James Meredith, Carmichael
expressed his anger in a surefire manner.

"We
been saying 'Freedom' for six years," he said, referring to the chant that
movement protesters used as they were beaten by hostile policemen pointing
water hoses and unleashing vicious attack dogs. "What we are going to
start saying now is 'Black Power!' "

For
me, and many other young Black Americans, "Black Power" and the "Black is
Beautiful" mantra that followed were psychologically liberating. But, with
the murder of Dr. King and the urban uprisings that followed, inner-city Black America went under siege; most of the businesses that hadn't been burned out shipped out and with them went far too many of the jobs.

Racial
integration made it possible for educated and motivated Blacks like me to follow the opportunities,
leaving those not as fortunate behind. Drugs invaded and occupied the Black community in overwhelming quantities; unrelenting crime and violence followed.

Soon,
for many poor, unskilled Blacks, the only Good Times was a sit-com on TV.

As
a general assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune, each year I'd cover
the State of Black Chicago speech given by James Compton, the president of the
Chicago Urban League. The list was a long litany of depressing facts dressed up
in unrelenting despair. On a couple of occasions, I covered the National Urban League's
annual conference when I heard more of the same.

That's
pretty much been the state of things and the outlook for things to come until
about a year ago. That, of course, was when it became clear that Barack Obama had a
real shot at becoming the POTUS.

Now that we have a Black man in the White House, argues Danielle Belton, on her blog, "The Black Snob," we're in a different era.

Some like Tavis Smiley haven't gotten the message. So Belton takes the radio/TV host to task for partying at his annual "State of the Black Union" gathering--as if it was 1999.

Rather than taking some the same point of view, Belton says that we may want to look up rather than hang our heads down. Take a look at her blog to see how she
sees it.>

The State of the Black Union concluded in Los Angeles this weekend after the input of various scholars, activists, political leaders and pundits, mixed with the fear of the recession (or depression if you're just talking about black people. Economically things have been nightmarish for African Americans for some time) with the optimism of President Barack Obama's election.

Founded by author/journalist Tavis Smiley, this was the 10th year for the event where 6,000 people attended panels, networked and discussed the state of the race.

The funny thing about the state of the race: it's bad.

Depending on where you live it is either horrific or merely annoying, but bad. Yet the other funny thing about black America is that if you've been hearing a car alarm blare at you for more than 100 hundred years, do you start to not even notice that it's there? Do you begin to think that your maladies are just realities? Do you accept the status quo?

All my life I've watched black people "settle." And when I mean settle, I mean it in many, many forms. Some "settle" for the mediocrity. Some settle for the poverty or violence of their neighborhoods (or the neighborhoods they left and now tut-tut as if fixing the old neighborhood was all the matter of Robert Preston showing up with 76 trombones to blow all the gangbangers away). Some settle for the fact that marriage, stability, peacefulness, happiness, good health, mental stability and intelligence is the property of others, not us, not for you. Things that should be natural rights become "something white folks do."

January 26, 2009

For nearly half of my life, Black History Month was Black History Week. In 1976, after Carter G. Woodson's initiative had been celebrated during the second week in February for 50 years, it became a month-long observance.

Although it's not official, not even announced, the Black History Month has quietly become Black History Season. It starts the day after Christmas, with Kwanzaa and runs through the end of February.

Dr. Martin Luther King's national holiday serves as the midway point for this season of recognizing Black History. So, it's befitting that Barack Obama would be sworn in as POTUS this year the day after MLK Day.

To mark that historical occurrence in these historical times, I was the keynote speaker at the King Day celebration a week ago today in Chicago Heights, thanks to an invitation from Mayor Anthony DeLuca and City Clerk Ethel Taylor invited to speak to their theme, "A Dream Achieved," which tied in Dr. King's dream to the Obama reality.

I don't believe we're quite there on the achievement piece, so here's the text to the speech I gave to to audience at Chicago Miracle Temple Church in Chicago Heights, Illinois:

The Dream Achieved

It was just a few months ago, when one of those opinion poll crews was canvassing Western Pennsylvania—you know, that area between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that may as well be Alabama?Anyway, one of the pollsters knocked on the front door of one of those western Pennsylvania homes. A woman came to the door. The pollster asked her if she was voting for John McCain or Barack Obama. The woman turned around and yelled, “Honey, who are we gonna vote for?” A male voice yelled out from the back of the house, “We’re votin for the nigger. The woman calmly turned and repeated to the pollster, “we’re voting for the nigger.”When I first told my wife, Joyce, this story, she thought that I was joking. I wasn’t. It happened. It was reported in newspapers. It was posted on the Internet.And, in a backhanded true-life sort of way, it lets us know that what Dr. King was addressing two score and six years ago is actually a dream half done.

The Pennsylvania couple may not have gotten past the color of Obama’s skin but they were able to see the content of his character. Speaking of seeing, I see puzzled looks on some of your faces. Wasn’t this supposed to be a speech about The Dream Achieved? Where’s this man going with this? Stay with me, okay?The original title of Dr. King’s 1963 speech was “Normalcy—Never Again.” That wasn’t exactly a title that would flow off anybody’s tongue or stir anyone’s soul. So, it didn’t take long or much imagination for Dr. King’s wonderful words to become the “I have a Dream” speech. Nor did it take long for his speech to get white washed by the mainstream media. In his speech, which was delivered at the March on Washington for jobs and freedom, Dr. King talked a little about his dream but a lot more about the American nightmare. He spoke less about what he hoped our nation would do and much more about what our nation had not done. That’s the part of the speech that gets little play on TV or radio. So, I’m going to read a key part of what Dr. King had to say. Before I say what Dr. King said, let me caution you: I’m going to say it without the wonderful flow or rhythm you’re used to hearing in Dr. King’s speech. I want you to hear the words stripped of the passion and flavor."In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'"When Obama takes his oath of office tomorrow I want you to think of it as earnest money…not that we’ve been paid in full. There are still some matters that need to be cleared from the books.Right now, there are one million black men unemployed. That’s what Dr. King was talking about.Right now, half our children drop out city high schools before they graduate. That’s what Dr. King was talking about.Right now, there are a million black men locked up behind bars. That’s what Dr. King was talking about.And here’s something he said in his Dream speech that could have been a sound bite from him after Oscar Grant was murdered by an Oakland transit cop two weeks ago: “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”I’m hoping that President Obama will be hearing Dr. King.Since he launched his presidential campaign, Barack Obama has been talking Lincoln but I suspect, that he was thinking King.

Yesterday, when Obama spoke in Washington, he stood in front of the Lincoln Monument but it was at the very spot Dr. King spoke 46 years ago. When I was on the Obama press bus last winter covering his campaign in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, I heard him quote from the Dream speech. At every campaign stop, Sen. Obama would explain to his overflow crowds that he was running for office because of what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of now.” Well, come tomorrow, the time will be now, for President Obama to cash and carry some of that urgency. When he swears in tomorrow, the time will be now for President Obama to also pay some old dues to those African American giants that shed blood, sweat and tears to make his presidential dream come true.

You know the names all too well. Frederick Douglass. W.E.B. DuBois. Booker T. Washington. Thurgood Marshall. Malcolm X. Rev. Jesse Jackson. Harold Washington. Colin Powell. And then there are the strong black women whose contributions were critical. Harriet Tubman. Sojourner Truth. Rosa Parks. Fannie Lou Hammer. Shirley Chisholm. Barbara Jordan. And even, let me see if I can get this out my mouth, Condoleezza Rice.If these men and women hadn’t done what they did, Barack Obama wouldn’t have been able to do what he has done—or what he will have to start doing beginning tomorrow. Thanks to his predecessor, Obama has a lot of doing—and undoing--to do.

After all the galas and parties are over and the celebrating has ended, we will still have some difficult days ahead. George W. Bush has left us in one big mess.

There are two wars waging. There’s the deep recession. There are tens of thousands of Americans losing their homes. There are nearly 50 million of us without health insurance. And nobody knows where the money is coming from or going to. And there’s a lot more that we can’t expect a President Obama to take on. Some of it is on us. Before the Dream can really be achieved, we’ve got to take care of our own business. Right now, only 25 percent of black children have a father in the house. That wasn’t Dr. King’s dream. Right now, our youth are killing our youth in record numbers. That wasn’t Dr. King’s dream. Right now, our senior citizens are afraid to leave their homes at night; afraid they’ll be mugged or murdered. That was not Dr. King’s dream. So, right now, I say that when President Obama is sworn in, that we flip the script.

In our public schools, rather than having the thugs in the in crowd and the brainiacs isolated and ignored, let’s make it hip to be smart.

Let’s see if our daughters can just say no to knuckleheads who want to see how many babies they can father but not bother to raise.

Let’s see if we can’t take Dr. King’s wise words and President Obama’s string of accomplishments and make them the new dream for the new generation and the generations to come. Let me remind you of the prophetic words in Dr. King’s Memphis speech, he spoke these words the night before he was murdered. “I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain top. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land.” Obama, obviously, is there. A lot of us are there with him. But there’s still some dreaming to do and work that must be done. None of us can afford to forget about those we’ve left behind. We owe it to Dr. King’s vision. Thanks and God bless.

While we're at it, here's the full length version of Dr. King's 1963 speech in Washington.

January 18, 2009

I am not alone in my belief that our 43rd president was the worst ever--Rolling Stone Magazinemade that assertion in April 2006. And while some may argue that James Buchanan did a worse job than George W. Bush, only the visually or mentally challenged will think he wasn't the worst president in modern times; he'll leave office with the lowest approval ratings in history, 22 percent

On Inauguration Day, it will be out with the worst and in, I'm hoping, with the greatest.

Nor am I alone in believing that Barack Obama will perform above and beyond the call of duty. You can tell by the numbers; 65 percent of Americans believe #44 will be an above average president. We may be in a deep recession but Brand Obama--from magazine covers to commemorative coins to wacky and weird merchandise--is booming. And you can tell it by the art. There's the iconic portrait by artist Shepard Fairey and a countless number of Obama-inspired art.

Joe, a wealthy old hippie who is in his mid-60s, has had faith and hope in Barack since the beginning. In fact, he claims pride of authorship for one of Obama's early campaign slogans--Obama Right from the Start--which is a reference to the Illinois senator's opposition to the war in Iraq.

Now that the candidate is about to become the president, the muse hit Joe up again. This time, rather than a mere slogan, it turned out to be a poem which then turned out to be a song--Five Fifths Strong: Redemption Song.

The title alludes to the infamous "three-fifths" compromise" of the Founding Fathers when they were constructing the U.S. Constitution in 1787. For those of you who are a little rusty on your American history, the "three-fifths" clause decrees that, for the purposes of counting each state's population to determine its number of Representatives in Congress and the distribution of taxes, African slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a human being.

We now have a man of African descent about to occupy the Executive House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue which is more than a gesture affirming black Americans' rise to full citizenship.

I think Joe's song does an incredible job of capturing the triumph of the moment. While it's Joe's lyrics, the music is by Atiba Jali. Five-Fifths Strong is sung by Ray Balkcom with the All City Elementary Youth Chorus of the Chicago Public Schools.

Take a listen and let me know what you think. Just click on the blue link below.

January 06, 2009

A chance meeting between a dull kitchen knife and my left hand as I prepared Christmas dinner turned into blood at first sight. So, I'm just now healed enough to be able to type with both hands. In other words, this is a lame excuse on why I haven't posted in three weeks.

But now, I'm back. Here's a column I wrote for Ebonyjet.com about Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Roland Burris to Barack Obama's vacated senate seat. The selection may be as much about jury selection as it is about good governance.

Here's what I had to say.

Mr. Burris Goes To Washington

The appointment of Roland Burris to Obama's
Senate seat is anything but a simple plan

January 6, 2009

By Monroe Anderson

I missed the exact
moment when Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate post became a blacks only
seat. No one sent me an email declaring it was ours. Nor did anyone hit
up my cell or Facebook page. I didn't even get a tweet.

But, apparently, the
seat that once belonged to the president-elect now commands exclusive dibs from
black pols in Illinois, period. No whites need apply. Asians or Hispanics
shouldn't bother either.Rep. Bobby Rush said
as much. During Gov. Rod Blagojevich's news conference last week announcing the
appointment of Roland Burris to Obama's vacated seat, the Illinois congressman
from Chicago emerged from the press pool to commandeer the mike. "Let me
remind you that there presently is no African American in the Senate,"
Rush said, talking through the media to address state and national Democrats.
"I would ask you not to hang or lynch the appointee as you try to
castigate the appointer."And while the
appointer kept asserting during the news conference that it was all about the
appointee, I didn't quite buy it.I believe that it's
about Burris as the black appointee as much as it is about the red
herring to be introduced at the governor's jury trial. Blagojevich hasn't
been indicted yet, but the big money is betting that he will be come spring.
Anticipating the inevitable, the governor has hired Ed Genson, the high-priced
super lawyer who got R. Kelly off, as his defense attorney.When the trial begins,
the Burris appointment—if it plays out badly with the Democrats over the next
couple of days—may play well in Blagojevich's defense. Think O.J. If the
Senate Dems have a fit, denying the one seat vacated by an African American to
be filled by another, then any blacks on the jury may be sympathetic enough to
the governor to vote to acquit him—striking another symbolic blow against
institutional American racism.I know it sounds a
little far-fetched but so does the idea that a governor would try to sell the
U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder. But it also sounds far-fetched
that in 21st-century America, blacks have no representation in the U.S. Senate,
while there are 13 Jewish Americans, three Hispanics and two Asians. It
is also outlandish that in this time of change, Democratic leaders would ignore
the law to play politics.Illinois State
Democrats are in a mad rush to impeach their defiant governor and U.S. Atty.
Patrick Fitzgerald is working overtime to indict him, but so far Blagojevich
has not been proven guilty of anything but having a filthy mouth. That
means the governor is lawfully empowered to appoint Burris, who is untouched by
any hint of corruption and unquestionably qualified to perform the duties of
the post.Thirty years ago,
Burris became state comptroller, the first black Democrat elected to statewide
office in Illinois. After three terms in that office, he was elected the
Illinois attorney general. Since then, he's become a lovable loser. He
has run three times for governor, and one time each for mayor and U.S. senator,
each time coming up empty handed.That's why Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Dems are doing so much hand wringing.
Although he denies it, Reid has been reported as
saying he did not want the seat to go to Representatives Jesse Jackson Jr.,
Danny Davis or state Senate President Emil Jones because he believes that none
of the three black men could win the statewide election in 2010.If the Democrats
insist on taking a bad situation and making it worse, it may be a moot point.
Secretary of State Jesse White, the highest-ranking black official in Illinois
right now, has refused to certify the Burris appointment. The Democrats
in the U.S. Senate insist that they won't seat Burris when he arrives at the
chambers today.They may want to
rethink that. Rep. Rush, a former minister of the Black Panthers who is
now a Baptist minister, Sunday night called the Senate "one of the last
bastions of plantation and racial politics in America," then warned that
the Senate Democrats who fight Burris' appointment are "going to ask for
forgiveness" from the black American voter.Hmmmm. Come to think
about it, that seat may need to be black after all.

Monroe
Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the
Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Check out his blog at monroeanderson.typepad.com